Six things to do at home

Are you taking a stay­cation — holidaying at home rather than travelling abroad? Even if you’re not visiting a place where you can speak English, there are lots of simple, fun ways to practise your language skills. We present virtual tips that we’re sure you’ll enjoy. And best of all, many of the activities are freekostenlosfree.

Time for a tour

If you thought museum visits were about walking around and looking at exhibitAusstellungsstückexhibits, then it’s time to visit the Curator’s Corner. In videos created by curators and scientists working with the British Museum, you can discover another side to museum life. The British Museum is home to about eight million objects to do with human history, art and culture, and the videos cover topics ranging from making a 3,000-year-old bed, with curator Manuela Lehmann explaining the process of building a traditional Nubian bed, to collections manager Wendy Adamson’s top five guns from the museum and how “some of these bad boys can still cause a lot of injury”. You’ll find the Curator’s Corner videos (between three and 15 minutes long) here.
 

The sound of music

Concert performances have been hit especially hard this year, but music fans take note: there’s lots of online music — not just to listen to, but also to join in with.

Singing aloud with others is one of the great joys in life, at least to the author of this feature, so the idea of the Sofa Singers is music to my ears and surely to those of other amateur warbler (ifml.)Singvogel; hier: Trällererwarblers, too. “The Sofa Singers is a twice-weekly online singing event from James Sills that brings hundreds of people together from around the world to to sparkentfachenspark joy and human connection” — that’s how hostModerator(in)host Sills describes the free, online singing sessions. You can use Evenbrite to register and Zoom to connect. Sing as loud as you want as it’s not possible to to sync (ifml.)synchronisierensync everyone at once. Afterwards, there’s a tea break, where you can chat with other participantTeilnehmer(in)participants. Join in here.

Playtime

The author of this feature has a to make a confessionetw. beichtenconfession to make: I’m a “Scrabble” addictSüchtige(r)addict. I’m not especially good at the game and have been known to use at least three lan­guages, including my own version of Latin, to get extra points. But I love the process of sorting and recombining the letters over and over again to make high-scoringmit hoher Punktzahlhigh-scoring words. Scrabble Go (available for IOS and Android) is a free app based on the classic board game — and this mobile version allows you to play with people all over the world.

Screen dreams

The melancholy thrumKlimpernthrum of the zither playing the iconickultig, Kulticonic theme tuneTitelmelodietheme tune should get you in the mood for The Third Man, a 1949 film noir starringmit … in einer Hauptrollestarring Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles. Much of it filmed on location in Vienna, the snippetSchnipsel; hier: Gesprächsfetzensnippets of German dialogue are as old-fashioned as the black-and-white city, but all the more charming for that. The Third Man is just one of many classic films you can watch by to subscribe to sth.etw. abonnierensubscribing to the archive of the British Film Institute. A subscription costs around €5.50 a month. The film is also available on Amazon Prime.
 

Dinner anyone?

Lockdown has caused many of us to to put onzunehmenput on a few pounds, but weighed against the joy of reconnecting with cooking and our kitchens, it seems a small price to pay. If you’ve fallen in love with food again, you may enjoy this tip.

In the 2009 comedy Julie & Julia, a young woman challenges herself to cook all the 524 recipeRezeptrecipes in Julia Child’s classic cookery book Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Go to the Kitchn Cooking School website to try a mini version of this challenge by working your way through the site’s 20 lessons. Unlike Child’s complicated re­cipes, the Kitchn Cooking School team teaches the basics of cooking vegetables and how to make a good sauce, and how to use salt. The presentations are fresh, modern and easy to follow. Put on your pinny (UK) (ifml.)Schürzepinny and visit their homepage.

On the move

Joe Wicks kept British kids in shape during the pandemic. Every morning at 9 a.m. (GMT), Wicks, a trained fitness coach, did a live workout for children called PE (physical education)Sport-, TurnunterrichtPE with Joe, but it works for adults, too. The ever-cheerful Wicks will have you jumping around your living room in no timeim Nuin no time. Begin by exercising your fingers to access the collection of classes here.